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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23712775">this is how it goes</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/belladonna_ink/pseuds/belladonna_ink'>belladonna_ink</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Voltron: Legendary Defender</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Depression, Gen, Hurt Lance (Voltron), Lance (Voltron) Angst, The Blade of Marmora (Voltron) - Freeform, can be interpreted as klance if you are so inclined, during like season something idk, if you wanna be sad for a sec this is your fic, its not post canon, no muy feliz, that time keith left for the bom and yk i just have feelings, twas briefly mentioned but whatever</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 21:15:12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,331</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23712775</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/belladonna_ink/pseuds/belladonna_ink</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>This is how it goes.</p><p>Have you ever looked at somebody when they have left and known you would never see them return?</p><p>He’s done it. That day, the sky was nothing, and the sun was infinite.</p><p>—</p><p>Keith leaves Voltron. Lance doesn’t cope well.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Keith/Lance (Voltron)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>64</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>this is how it goes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>So I haven’t posted in a while, but I recently got really into Voltron, and I wrote this... thing tonight. Changed it from lowercase to capitalized properly, and here it is!<br/>It’s... sad.<br/>And it might not be completely accurate to stuff that happened in canon, but if it’s off then just consider it to be an AU.<br/>I mostly just projected onto Lance and decided to post this.<br/>Enjoy.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>This is how it goes.</p><p> </p><p>Have you ever looked at somebody when they have left and known you would never see them return?</p><p> </p><p>He’s done it. That day, the sky was nothing, and the sun was infinite. It was all around him, and comprised of pinprick dots. He let his hand move to the other, let it reach out, and he let his mouth say words he never dared his mind to think. And still it hadn’t worked. </p><p> </p><p>Somehow, Keith was gone.</p><p> </p><p>And Lance wasn’t alone.</p><p> </p><p>Not physically.</p><p> </p><p>But he would know, better than ever now, that it was frighteningly easy to feel alone in a room full of people. Increasingly he would find himself in rooms he didn’t remember walking to, on autopilot at all times.</p><p> </p><p>And that was how he found it reasonable how everyone around him didn’t see him as much as they used to.</p><p> </p><p>He breathes slow and deep, the tides of the ocean tugging his lungs to expand and deflate, their hands briny and dainty with each count.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> one. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> two. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> one. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> two. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>They don’t listen to him anymore.</p><p> </p><p>One day he woke up, and there were no more words left for him. No more eyes that wouldn’t skim past him. As if he hadn’t come soon enough, and he was staring at a cheerful sign that told him to come back later. </p><p> </p><p>He speaks, and the room carries on like he had never spoken. He walks, and it never feels like he makes a sound.</p><p> </p><p>He is pulled between colors. He is saltwater taffy in their hands, malleable, able to be <em> red and blue and red and blue and red and blue and red and blue and red and blue and-</em></p><p> </p><p>Maybe he’s always been a placeholder.</p><p> </p><p>Maybe he wasn’t smart enough to realize it until now.</p><p> </p><p>His blood is pushed by his heart every which way, and it pounds against his ears every time he eats and it pounds behind his eyes every time he doesn’t.</p><p> </p><p>He begins to skip meals. He knows it’s okay when nobody stops him. He isn’t held anymore, coddled. He knows his worth and his place, and he knows how his place isn’t here. There isn’t an empty spot. <em> This isn’t a participation game. </em></p><p> </p><p>He's been given too many meaningless trophies, and he’s seen others being given the real deal. He never feels any better about it when he gets something that means nothing.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> one. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> two. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> one. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> two. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>They stand as a whole. Like they’re put-together, despite the fact that they’re simultaneously united at the mind and still parts and pieces and <em>broken</em> in their spirit and soul, and he can’t figure it out. Maybe it’s just him.</p><p> </p><p>How they stand together, and how even though he’s a small piece of the grand puzzle, universally and personally, there isn’t anything there for him.</p><p> </p><p>He tried being loud. Tried to make them notice him, see him. And they don’t. They brush him off, see his flaws instead of him, and he knows that it could be his fault. He messed up. He has been messing up. For a long, long while.</p><p> </p><p>Tactics, tactics, tactics. He's great at chess. Great with <em> strategies. He </em> can tell when something doesn’t work, won’t work. And yet he had tried way too long with the lovable dummy card, <em>stupid stupid stupid</em>, and now he’s only stuck with the latter title, branded to his forehead, the other bit behind his hair somewhere. Invisible.</p><p> </p><p>Something like himself.</p><p> </p><p>It seems kinda ironic, to him. Maybe he had been too loud, so everyone had decided that they would pretend he was silent.</p><p> </p><p>Like his lungs weren’t pulled by the sea and his blood didn’t pound behind his eyelids and his ears weren’t burning with the longing to hear his own name be attached to anything other than a joke. Like his body was simply wind with a gun, a ghost that could hit a target.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> one. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> two. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> one. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> two. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>He patterns himself with grey. He shrugs on grey jackets. Grey bracelets. Grey shirts. Dark and light shades, varying hues, but never not reminiscent of prison garb. It’s only emphasized with the resigned way he wears it. A curse, but something like a prophecy. Like him. It’s his burden to bear, the weight of never existing.</p><p> </p><p>He thinks it might be his favorite color now. It’s a nothing color. It’s him. Whatever he is, this is it.</p><p> </p><p>Like metal, he says. Like the rain, he doesn’t.</p><p> </p><p>And like nothing at all, he begins to become silent.</p><p> </p><p>He blends into the background easier now. They walk past him with ease, and now he can pretend that he knows why. He can go through a whole mission without talking and they don’t notice. He says to himself in the mirror with a rough, unused voice and tired, tired eyes that he’s proud of it, like it’s an accomplishment and not a burden. He's a small piece of a grand puzzle, but he isn’t a <em>whole </em>piece either, and he doesn’t know how to fix it.</p><p> </p><p>He’s missing something, he thinks. He’s missing someone, he doesn’t.</p><p> </p><p>And while missing him like he misses the rain, he stays silent.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> one. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> two. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> one. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> two. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>He’s made it a habit now to give himself a pep talk in the mirror, after dinner with everyone, and he has to clear his throat all the time now. He’s faded out so quickly, and yet somehow it wasn’t odd to anyone.</p><p> </p><p>Was he just that good at being nothing?</p><p> </p><p>When he had once pictured going out, he pictured dying. In battle, or in a hospital bed surrounded by friends and family. But either way, he pictured it being something that mattered, something with a little <em> oomph </em> that at least got some recognition.</p><p> </p><p>He supposes that he’s partially there with the latter depiction of his slow descent in the <em> away </em> he was slipping into, but he isn’t on a hospital bed.</p><p> </p><p>He’s going out and he isn’t going out like an exploding star. Instead he’s…</p><p> </p><p>He’s going out wearing grey and being silent, eating one meal a day and clearing his throat to talk to himself in the mirror afterwards. He walks slow and breathes slower, the ocean pushing at him to keep going, keep going, and he knows that it’s Blue; his blood is being pushed by his heart to live, to exist, and he knows that it’s Red.</p><p> </p><p>He goes out quiet.</p><p> </p><p>But when he leaves, it’s loud. He leaves with a bang.</p><p> </p><p>Nobody notices until he doesn’t reply on the comms. Even with his unofficial vow of silence, he still would answer if he had almost been killed taking a shot for Pidge. And he doesn’t.</p><p> </p><p>Even then…</p><p> </p><p>It takes a while.</p><p> </p><p>Allura is confused when Blue goes haywire. It’s somewhat like the equivalent of somebody kicking and screaming, <em>don’t go don’t go don’t go no no no please, </em>and it’s almost grieving. That word perplexes her, when it shoves its way to the top of her thoughts, but she brushes it off. Moves on.</p><p> </p><p>Keith is even more confused. He's resting at the Blade of Marmora headquarters, with Red still in the back of his mind as always, when Red <em> panics</em>. Red is all-encompassing in her terror, in her desperation, and Keith knows something is wrong. That deep-seated sort of wrong that gnaws at somebody, a kind of horror that sets in slowly and crescendos, and doesn’t ever stop.</p><p> </p><p>So he leaves.</p><p> </p><p>Not in the way Lance leaves.</p><p> </p><p>He leaves to come back.</p><p> </p><p>He takes a pod that he probably shouldn’t use for personal reasons, but he does it anyways. He comes back. And Lance...</p><p> </p><p>When Keith arrives, he is greeted with quiet. Red is not as loud as she normally prefers to be. It feels like a mourning period.</p><p> </p><p>And it looks like it too.</p><p> </p><p>Especially when he chokes on a sob, and sees Lance after he’s left.</p><p> </p><p>This is how it goes.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> one. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> two. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> one. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> ... </em>
</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Btw, I’m planning on posting a role swap AU soon. Maybe check it out later when it’s up?</p></blockquote></div></div>
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